by Richard Fox
“I’ve got hints and rumors from around the scientific community back in Sol. There’s exciting work on power supplies, things completely off the charts, like contained singularities that will make our fifth-generation fusion plants downstairs look like child’s play, but nothing nearly as civilization-shifting as a network of permanent, safely transversable wormholes.”
“Bigger power plants are still a good thing, as I see it,” he said.
Stephane raised an inquiring eyebrow.
“As I understand your specs, the range is only limited by power generation capacity.”
“Not exactly,” she said. “The amount of power dictates how big an entrance and exit, the aperture and terminus, you can tease open through space-time. If someone gets the jump on SG in power production, we won’t control the market. Even if Caleb Tirado somehow maintains strict control over the final commercialized wormholes, they would still have to be synced with the newer, bigger power sources, and we’d find ourselves in yet another corporate cold war.”
“Why, Doctor Bescond, how very mercenary of you.”
“And admittedly so,” she answered. “All the megacorps are run by egomaniacal bastards and bitches. Caleb Tirado is by far the best of the bunch, at least in purely utilitarian terms. Just look at SG’s charitable work. Our CEO is the best bet for the greatest number of people.”
“As long as the profit margins are there,” Six said, “magnanimity helps SG’s public relations division, which in turn ends up adding more black ink to the books.”
“Why, Commander Bergman, how very corporate of you.”
***
When it became apparent that Doctor Bescond wasn’t going to kill the skipper outright, the four members of the security team not in orbit, not babysitting the fusion generators, or not flirting with the leader of the science team started drinking again. Garza had produced a second case of champagne bulbs from somewhere and they were busy trying to one-up each other regarding how their bonuses would be spent.
Robert Upton claimed he was going to finally take his wife on one of those expensive Saturn pleasure cruises where the two of them would get drunk until their hair hurt. Dao Van Khan said he was going to go free-climb some of the massive cave complexes found in his native Vietnam. Matthew Kotze, the team’s only Mars-born, tried to top them all with a detailed itinerary of his planned visits to all the canyon brothels on his homeworld, a trip that he assured them would take the better part of a year and require ridiculous amounts of vitamin E. He expected envious and appreciative responses from his teammates. Instead, he received a priority alert through the base datanet.
As the team’s facility generalist, he was used to various systems asking for his attention, so an alert wasn’t unusual. Life support, water and food, even waste systems got out of whack now and then, and it was his job to oversee all of it. In truth, Aadesh 49 usually handled whatever problems cropped up. Since the base had been completed, Matthew had pretty much been coasting. Huge upfront effort, a long, easy deployment, followed by a massive payoff.
His wetware pulsed the alert icon red in his mind, demanding his immediate attention. He took another big gulp from his champagne bulb and opened the icon with a thought. The alert details unfolded into his consciousness.
Proximity warning. Incoming unknown spacecraft, followed by speed and a possible range of vectors. Matthew gagged as comprehension slammed home, causing him to cough, spewing the unswallowed champagne straight through the holodisplays, drenching the slanted console surface behind. Liquid spattered and dripped down the projectors, turning the crisp holos into a kaleidoscope of blurry color. Before Matthew could react, Aadesh 49’s presence joined him in accessing the warning. The AI handled the shock with a bit more composure.
***
Six heard Matthew’s raspberry over the din of conversation just as Aadesh 49 chimed in his ear.
“Commander Bergman,” the AI said.
“Just ‘Six’, Addy. What’s Matt looking at?”
“Commander Six, we have an unknown space vessel approaching Erebos at high speed.” The AI’s tone was neutral, completely nonchalant, despite that fact that their presence was supposed to be completely secret.
“Quiet!” Six shouted, cutting off all conversation, leaving only the slight hum of the air system. “Talk to me, Matt.”
“Long-distance passive sensors up on the Path have picked up an incoming vessel that's headed straight for us. It doesn’t look like it’s slowing down. ETA five minutes.”
Garza and Robert shot to their feet headed up the stairs to Six and Stephane’s command station. Neither had duty positions in the control center, but both had top of the line combat wetware installed, and knew to be close at hand if Six needed them to do something. Everyone else saw the plot of the incoming ship as Matthew shunted the alert and its accompanying data to their consoles and the main holodisplay up front.
“No corporate SG IFF codes. No emissions of any kind except infrared,” Matthew said.
“It’s not a company ship, then,” Khan said, turning to look up at Six.
“Not our company, anyway,” Six said, his good mood evaporating. He opened a channel to JoJo and Fazion, ordering them back to the ship, and then brought up his suite of combat programs. If it turned into a fight, his options were pitifully limited, and Sixten Bergman hated not having options. The secrecy surrounding the mission and the base’s location was supposed to be their best defense, not military hardware. Had someone on SG’s executive board sold them out? Was SG, this very instant, in the middle of a hostile takeover?
“Matt,” Six said, “turn off all external lights and reduce the datanet connection with the Path down to a minimum.”
“Why are you shutting everything down?” Stephane asked.
“They might see our ship,” Six replied, “but they probably haven’t seen us down here yet. No reason to give them more intel than we have to.”
“Okay, but why are you assuming that ship is hostile?”
“I always assume every ship that’s not mine is hostile, especially ships that show up unexpectedly out at the edge of nowhere, where nobody’s supposed to be,” Six said.
***
Currentmaster ProudRock Aptor stood on the bridge of his starship and watched with all six eyes as the human ship grew closer on the tactical plot. His orders given, there was nothing to do but wait for velocity to bring them within range. Looking around the bridge with all six of his eyes, he wondered about the species that had built this vessel.
The ship’s interior lighting was a pleasing blue-white, the air had just the right amount of humidity and salt content, and partitions were installed between his bridge officers’ stations, lest they tear each other apart under combat stress as egopocid crews tended to do. Despite that almost every aspect of the starship’s interior catered to Aptor and his crew, the ship itself was not made by egapocid hands. Seemingly reading his mind, the ship’s pessimist, LongTree Wavisoc, looked around the bridge and back at Aptor.
“Do you regret being given command of an alien-made ship, Currentmaster, rather than one of the new models constructed by our own shipyards?” Wavisoc asked, the long tentacles around his circular mouth pulsing rhythmically, showing the proper respect to a superior.
Aptor considered the question for a moment before responding. One always had to watch the exact choice of words when talking to a pessimism officer. Aptor had not been told the species of alien that had built and originally operated his vessel, but it was apparent, even to the slowest swimmer, that the chairs were all a bit too low for egapocid legs and haunches, the ceiling just a little too low, and the personal waste systems nearly unusable. No, this ship had been designed and built for someone else, but it was he, ProudRock Aptor, that the Bright Father had chosen for a raid into the very heart of human space, and he had seized the opportunity with both thumbclaws. Still, when Aptor looked around, he saw discolorations on the deck and walls, evidence that control stations and subsystems of
unknown function had been removed prior to his crew taking possession of the ship.
Having been chosen for such a daring mission, doesn’t the Bright Father wish his most devoted followers to have the utmost in capabilities? The question troubled him, but it did not dissuade him in the least.
“No, Wavisoc,” Aptor said, his needle-teeth clicking together to emphasize his honesty, “I do not regret the Bright Father’s generosity.”
At the mention of one of their god’s many titles, LongTree Wavisoc replied with His true name as required, echoed by the rest of the bridge officers.
“May Empyrean’s fire warm our cold blood.”
Aptor nodded and went back to watching the approach vector. He wanted to be on top of the humans before they had time to react. Aggressive tactics were generally the best tactics. Of course, the ship’s pessimism officer didn’t see it that way, but that was his duty.
“Perhaps an attack run isn’t the best way to do this, Currentmaster. Perhaps a hard burn that will stop us far short of the human vessel, where we can observe. Maybe we can even figure out a way to communicate with them.”
“Perhaps, Pessimist Wavisoc,” Aptor said, “but those are not our orders. The human gravitic technology is to be captured intact or, if that proves to be impossible, destroyed. The Avatar’s mandate left no room for interpretation.”
When ProudRock Aptor was still a hatchling, the egapocid homeworld was at the height of a steam age. Disaster struck when an alien colony ship crash-landed in a remote, inhospitable area. Soon after, a species calling themselves the nawachi came out shooting. Vastly outnumbered by the egapocid, but possessing the salvaged remnants of their far more advanced technology, the nawachi quickly conquered a third of the planet. The egapocid reacted as they had since the beginning of time: attack. Attack hard, attack fast, show no mercy. Such a strategy nearly proved their downfall, as the nawachi favored stealth, trickery, and ambush with their hated superior weaponry. In the end, with nearly all remaining pockets of free egapocid under attack, only the divine intervention of the Bright Father had turned the tide of the war. Within a single season, the last nawachi had been blasted from the face of the homeworld.
Victorious and in willing servitude of their Glorious Savior, the egapocid went from steam engines to starships within a single generation. The leadership of the fledgling egapocidian space force never forgot the lessons of the Nawachi Era. Given their people’s tendency to favor brute force tactics, it was decided that someone needed to point out the possible negative outcomes of every command decision. The Pessimist Corps was created to assume that responsibility, and every egapocidian ship had one of their graduates standing next to the currentmaster, making sure they knew the consequences of their orders.
Aptor warbled the tentacles ringing his circular mouth, letting his officers know he was about to speak to them.
“Sensors, do the humans have an installation on the surface of that world?”
“No human installation on the surface within range of our systems, Currentmaster.”
Ground-based weapons were always more powerful than those installed on warships. Generators and capacitors didn’t have space restrictions on a planet, and on worlds this far out from the human primary, there would be no atmosphere to degrade beam performance. Aptor shifted his heavy bulk in agitation, once again eyeing the blank patches around the bridge.
Could one of those systems detect a hidden human installation?
No good was gained by wasting concern about it now. He warbled again.
“Navigation, continue on your current heading as planned. After our first pass, decelerate and bring us back around into an orbit that matches the human vessel.”
***
Fazion Sedaris heard the comms array click on, and Commander Bergman’s voice boomed in his ears.
“JoJo, an unknown ship is coming in fast. I need both of you back aboard the Path right now.”
Fazion turned to look at JoJo, but the pilot had already spun her thruster suit toward the ship and was jetting away on a long burst of cold gas.
“Roger that, skipper,” she said. “Come on, Fazion. Get that pod moving. Don’t make me come back and get you.”
“Visitors?” Fazion stammered, trying to pull up the pod’s docking menu. “But I thought nobody knows we’re here!”
“It’ll go faster if you just turn on the auto-dock. Hurry the hell up!”
Fazion was suddenly all thumbs. The controls he had been familiar with seeming brand new, almost like he’d never touched them before. “I’m trying to!” His fingers brushed the thruster controls and the little orb started a slow roll. He decided to forget the automatic system and just hit the main thruster while clumsily trying to compensate for his spin. The Path was less than fifty meters, drifting down and to the right in his viewportal. He realized he was going to overshoot, and hit the braking thrusters, bringing his velocity to near zero and somehow successfully bringing the airlock back into the center of his view. Except for the bright pool of green light over the airlock, the mottled black-gray hull was only visible as a dark shape that occluded the starfield for hundreds of meters to his left and right. This close to the Path, the freighter looked more like a long building than a vehicle capable of moving faster than light. He saw the airlock hatch going up and JoJo standing half inside, waving at him to hurry.
He started to drift again and glanced down at the controls, promising himself that he would spend a few hours in a pod simulation to build up some proficiency. Something other than JoJo moved at the edge of his field of view, blurring, then gone. He looked up just in time to see the entire universe turn into white-hot light. Searing pain burned his face, burned his eyes, and lanced into his skull.
***
Six moved first, breaking the stunned silence and disbelief that pervaded the control center. Up on the main holo, a grainy image of No Logical Path showed the entire reactor and main drive section pinwheeling away from the long, narrow freighter. Details were fuzzy at this resolution, but it was clear that the rear third of the ship had been sliced off, imparting a slow roll to port for the rest. He watched as Khan zoomed in and panned around, and Six gritted his teeth, looking for the little spot of light that would indicate someone moving around outside the ship. He couldn’t see anything, but the image was crap. They could be on the far side of the hull.
“JoJo! Fazion! Respond!” Six waited a couple of silent, agonizing seconds for them to respond. “Khan, I want a better visual of the Path up on the main holo right now.”
“Working on it, skipper!” Khan replied, hands blurring through a horseshoe-shaped fan of holodisplays at his station.
“I can’t connect to the ship,” Stephane exclaimed, her pupils darting back and forth as she tried various virtual menus in her mind.
“The datanet link to the Path has been lost, Doctor,” Aadesh 49 said.
“If the reactor is damaged, or, in this case…lost,” Six muttered, “the onboard systems will be running on emergency batteries. After that’s gone, we’ll still have the main capacitor banks, if they’re not damaged, but in the meantime, a shard of Addy’s mentality is up there, running through his disaster protocols. Reestablishing the connection to us down here will be somewhere toward the bottom of the list.”
“Uh…Doctor Bescond,” Harrison said from his station down on the main floor, “should we close the wormhole?”
“Merde,” she whispered. “I forgot the damned thing was still on standby.” Louder, so all three of her people could hear, she said, “Ichabod, start the shutdown sequence. Prem—”
“Wait,” Six said, holding up a finger.
“For God’s sake, why?”
“We might need it to evacuate JoJo and Fazion down to us.”
Stephane’s eyes widened and her mouth dropped open. “Absolument pas! No way, Bergman. The system is not ready for human transit. Not only could someone die coming through, but if we screw it up, their mass could easily end up converting into
enough energy to kill everyone at the other end.”
“We need options, doc. Leave it in standby mode.”
Stephane looked down from the dais at her staff for a long moment, before giving them a single quick nod. She noticed Six’s team had already gotten back into their spacesuits, sans helmets, but she saw those were kept within close reach. “All of you, get your suits back on and sealed.”
Robert Upton stepped up from behind Six’s left side, holding two large composite crates. At the first hint of trouble, the big man had slipped out of the control center and retrieved both his and Garza’s combat kits. The tall Irishman looked up at the shoddy image of their only way back to Sol.
“Skipper,” he said, “good to see the Path again, but where are the hostiles?”
Six winced. Tactically, that should have been the first thing on his mind, even before JoJo’s and Fazion’s status. Am I actually getting too old for this?
“Commander,” Aadesh 49 said, “I have a LADAR image of the hostile taken just before they attacked. We have nothing in the recognition database to match. Not only is it not human, it doesn’t match any xeno design styles that the UEF has encountered, including first contact files unreleased to the general public.”
A monochromatic three-dimensional image appeared on the main holo, followed by another in the infrared spectrum, taken at the same instant. It was unlike anything Six had ever seen. It looked like a cone-shaped candle that had melted symmetrically down the sides. Not quite organic-looking, but nothing like the lines and angles of human-designed spacecraft. It came in wide-end first, and the infrared image showed massive heat spikes preceding it, most likely engines. There were mounds and blisters here and there, evenly spaced around the hull. One toward the tapered end was hotter all the other surfaces surrounding it, mostly likely the weapon turret that had slashed at the Path.